Onyx Reveals Android Prototype Phone with E Ink Screen

Screens are always a weak point for any smartphone. It is the major component that drains batteries and you have to crank up the brightness levels if you want to see what’s on the screen under direct sunlight.

Onyx International is hoping that their solution may be able to address the issue of smartphone screens by developing a smartphone that has an E ink screen. Onyx is actually well known in the field of e ink screens since it manufactures the Boox e-readers. The smartphone Onyx is developing is still under prototype but the company has produced a video to show off the screen, which it is compared to a Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

The video shows that the Onyx E ink screen is delivering on its promise, under daylight conditions the Galaxy Nexus hardly showed anything but the Onyx screen was bright, crisp and extremely readable. The screen performance is, of course, nothing surprising because we’ve already seen it in E ink Ebook readers.

The Onyx smartphone runs an extremely modified Google Android operating system that would allow it to run on a monochrome screen. But the video shows that all of the basic functionalities of Android are present. And because the phone uses an E ink screen, the smartphone prototype can go on standby for almost a month – that is unprecedented smartphone battery life any way you look at it.